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Research update #62 – The importance of faculty/central

I haven’t posted one of these for a while but the work has been rolling along. In the last month I’ve written ~25k words of analysis on two questions (two big questions) in my pilot survey.

After all that, something hit me just now. I was writing about my surprise that academic developers and learning designers downplay project management activities and knowledge among education technologists, suggesting that they see this work more as reactive, 1:1 support focused. Now for me, knowing how involved big projects relating to implementation or analysis/evaluation of education technologies can be, this seemed to be a clear example of lacking awareness of what is happening in your backyard. (And there are big blind spots between all role types)

But these big projects are generally something that occurs in central teams, at an institutional level. Perhaps also among Ed Techs at more senior levels. If ADs and LDs are reflecting on what the ETs they interact with the most are doing (and knowing) on a daily basis, and these are the ETs in their faculties, it makes sense that they may have quite a different perspective.

In hindsight, this all seems painfully obvious but whoa.